The Scarred Beauty of Mathematics

When you are asked of "What is your least favorite subject?", most of us would probably have the most common answer (so common that it is like the expected answer to that question). Do you know what is it? You guessed it right. MATH.

According to the New International Webster's Concise Dictionary, Mathematics is defined as the logical study of quantity,form, arrangement, and magnitude; especially, the methods for disclosing, by the use of rigorously defined concepts and symbols, the properties of quantities and relations.

Sounds complicated right? Even the definition gives you a scratch in the head, knitted brows and a little headache.

So to simply things, math is the only thing on Earth that gives students a severe headache and an uncontrollable nose-bleed. And you know what makes it so unique? They experience both these incredible phenomena on the same time, Math time! As a result, it's either the student runs off from the classroom with the may-I-go-to-the-comfort-room excuse or make the student doze off into a deep sleep.

Just kidding. Seriously, Math is everything and everywhere!

From your ten fingers (which, by the way, is the first tool used to teach us math when we were kids) to the measurements and calculations engineers used to construct buildings.

From the time it took you to finish bathing to your fare which varied on the distance you traveled going to school.

See? Math is everything. From the simplest things to the most complicated ones. And because of this, it is impossible not to discover math.

Speaking of discovery, let's talk about the documentary entitled “The Language of the Universe”.

When I heard that we were going to watch a movie, I got excited and thought of all the amazing movies we might possibly watch (hoping it was Catching Fire!). But then I realized, it must be associated to math. I was right. We were going to watch a documentary about a history of math.

It was all about mathematics in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece.

In ancient Egypt, Marcus de Sautoy revealed that Egyptians used the Decimal System, based on the 10 fingers of the hand, to record the result of their calculations on practical problems they encounter. In addition, they used their bodies to measure thus the units of measurement was created.

He also discovered that the way we tell time today is based on the Babylonian Base 60 Number System used by the Mesopotamia as well as the great discovery of zero to represent an empty place between numbers than leave a blank space.

Lastly is in Greece where the strength of mathematics started, the power of proof. He also looked on the outstanding contributions of some giants of mathematics. First is Pythagoras for his Pythagorean Theorem, Plato for conceptualizing Geometry, Euclid for the elements (calculations for cones, cylinders and the 5 platonic solids) and Archimedes' discovery of pi and the areas and volumes of regular shapes.

I guess most of you would think that watching this would be unbearable and boring (since it talks about math for at least one hour). But I would tell you that it is not. Yeah, it is all about math but it contains a reality that we cannot separate math from our lives. As I'd said earlier, math is everything and everywhere. If you think that math is difficult to understand and learn, what more in the ancient times where they don't have any references at all (unlike us that we have our books)? They just relied on the observations they got from their surroundings and thought of possible ways to explain things.

Our math today is even simpler than theirs. For certain, Egyptians would write lots of symbols to denote an equation but we just have to write it in few characters. They invent and make new symbols to represent numbers but we were born that 1 is written as 1 and 2 as 2.

Math is very important in this physical world. You cannot deny that through math, we now live in this world easily. We will not have our skyscrapers and bridges if math wasn't discovered. Cellphones, laptops and other techy stuffs would not be created. And we would still be very ignorant of the things around us if it wasn't for the help of mathematics.

To end this, math has its own beauty scarred by criticisms and judgments of people (specially students) who think that math is all about those complicated formulas and problems. But mathematics is not all about numbers, its beauty and powers make us understand everything we need to know in this perfect world. So learn to appreciate, love and be thankful that a certain discipline called mathematics exists.